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First Look: Ride Austin

There have been many new ridesharing services to enter Austin since Lyft and Uber have left us, but one stands out and may be the one service to rule them all. Ride Austin is an app developed by local Austin tech companies and the app is a nonprofit service. The developers have promised that the service would be open source so that other cities could use it to develop their own ride sharing hubs.

Ride Austin Accessibility

Even though the service for Ride Austin is not in place you can still download the app, and I did this to check out if the app is accessible. I was able to fully sign up for the service using Facebook, get and enter a verification code from my text messages, and explore the app without any issues with VoiceOver. The menu at the top left was accessible, and the button telling me that there was no drivers available was also accessible.

The company has not added the portion for a payment method yet, so we will have to wait and see how accessible this part of the app will be, but it is interesting to note that the Ride Austin app is more accessible than Get Me, or FARE. Both Get Me and FARE are for profit apps, and that is why it is interesting that a nonprofit app works better than the others.

Conclusion

Ride Austin is a new service, and it will start operating in June. I suggest that you sign up for the service and show the developers that you are interested in what they have to offer. Ride Austin is a fully accessible app, and lets all speak up and let the developers know that we appreciate this level of detail. Ride now will start with rides downtown and at the airport in June, and will move around the city from there after they see how well the service works.